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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27276877">to the moon and to saturn</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/forestmagicwithin/pseuds/forestmagicwithin'>forestmagicwithin</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol, Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Songfic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:10:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,291</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27276877</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/forestmagicwithin/pseuds/forestmagicwithin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
      <p>partially inspired by @dannikathewomanika and @brothersblack on tumblr</p>
    </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sirius Black/Remus Lupin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>to the moon and to saturn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>partially inspired by @dannikathewomanika and @brothersblack on tumblr</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>          Leaning against the streetlamp, Remus fought the urge to collapse onto the pavement and never rise again. Occasionally, revelers would pass by, laughing or exhausted, most with costumes half-peeled off already. They didn't pay him much mind; plenty of young adults were making their way home, drunk on parties and terrible pumpkin-themed alcohol. He'd been called to by a couple who were very eager to compliment him on his "Sherlock Holmes costume".</p><p>          Remus Lupin had not celebrated Halloween in six years. It had been nearly as long since he'd been down this particular street, but he couldn't bear to pay his annual visit to Godric's Hollow tonight. He wasn't angry- well, he was, but it was an old anger, tired and worn. It lay dormant for now, letting the uncertainty take hold for the night. He hated it more, but there was no energy for anything else.</p><p>          It was just a few houses down now. Number 12 would be invisible to him, to everyone, but he still knew exactly where to look. He wondered who held claim to it now, with most of the Blacks either dead or in prison or married long before. Perhaps Narcissa now, or still Sirius, locked away though he may be. He didn't care much about the politics of ownership where corrupt purebloods were concerned.</p><p>          There was a balcony he was determinedly not looking at. He'd never asked how Sirius had managed to get up to it; it was false, attached to no real room or window. It connected the buildings of numbers 11 and 13, yet another lie to fool onlookers. Sirius had spoken to him and James through the mirror one summer, while Remus and Peter had been visiting the Potters for a few weeks. Casual and beautiful, Sirius had idly braided his hair on one occasion, fingers moving deftly through slender curling locks as he spoke. Remus didn't remember what he'd been talking about, only that he'd missed the feel of Sirius's hair, the flow of curls and wildness. They'd spent many an evening in the common room on a couch, Sirius sitting on the floor working through homework or adding to the map while Remus, half-asleep but content, ran drowsy fingers through Sirius's hair.</p><p>          Somehow, Remus had ended up staring at that blasted balcony, lost in memory. He clenched his jaw and managed to make it one streetlamp closer, never taking his eyes off it. What lay behind it was to blame.</p><p>          He'd only been inside Grimmauld Place twice. Once had been before Sirius had left the Blacks, and the second was on a daring rescue mission with James and Peter, to retrieve a few possessions Sirius had forgotten to take with him when he'd run away to the Potters. Both times, he'd felt constantly watched, even in Sirius's bedroom, with no glaring portraits or spying house elves. The whole place had a strange feel about it, menacing somehow. Orion Black had been an angry man, and the echoes of heavy footsteps and doors closed a little too hard seemed not the only vestiges of his temper. Walburga seemed to share it, her voice always taking an edge that was difficult to listen to, as though accompanied by a high-frequency noise. Sirius had felt ever-threatened, ever on the brink of some terrible cliff. Remus had not understood it so well the first time he had visited, but he did the second.</p><p>          Sirius had visited the Lupins' far more often, in their modest home just half an hour's walk from the shore. He and James often borrowed Remus's parents' bikes, and the three of them would ride down to the sea, Sirius daring fate to twist as he flew down hills nearly standing upright, no hands and legs lifting him off the seat. Remus had privately suspected some adolescent magic keeping Sirius unknowingly safe, though he'd never made the suggestion. The sand was too warm and the sky too blue to risk losing that protection with Sirius's awareness of it. They'd play games like twelve year olds, building sand replicas of Hogwarts and searching out sea glass like treasure, tying scarves around their heads and imitating pirates long dead that had once been seen near those beaches.</p><p>          James kept some Muggle book with him that Lily had lent him, an old tale of shipwrecked boys who made a new home on an island and grew up to sail the world together. "That'll be us some day, once old Hogwarts is done with us," James had promised. "We'll make our way out and sail to Portugal, Italy- even India, boys, we'll see it all." Sirius had laughed at him then, ruffling James's hair and strutting about like a pirate captain.</p><p>          He'd shown Sirius the forest too, the little place he'd known since he was nine years old. They'd had to run through a field to get to it, tripping and stumbling the whole way on overgrown weeds and stubborn roots belonging to long-dead trees. Sirius had seen his rope swing, hanging from a tree by the creek, and was daring enough to leap from it right into the water, Remus laughing in surprise.</p><p>          "They can't hear me out here," he'd confided later, the two of them lying on their backs under another tree. "I come out here nowadays whenever I'm angry or feeling the full moon coming on. No one hears when you shout, or yell-"</p><p>          "Or howl?" Sirius had asked, that mischievous glint in his eyes.</p><p>          "They can't hear anything. You can pounce and scamper and yell all you want, act as wolfish or human, sad or lonely or angry- they'll hear none of it." The Lupins' town was small and remote; Remus wouldn't have risked transforming in the forest, but he was free to let everything out in it.</p><p>          <em>Don't go home</em>, he'd wanted to say. <em>Stay with me- stay here.</em> Sometimes he'd imagined building a home in some large tree and living the rest of his life in the forest, with just him and Sirius and the others. There was another Muggle book James had borrowed, this one from Remus. It was his father's battered old copy of <em>Peter Pan</em>, with his Lost Boys and pirate foe. James would've understood, surely, if Remus had made the suggestion- wouldn't he? James was practically a Peter in his own right, leading their little troupe and forever chasing his Wendy.</p><p>          But Remus hadn't mentioned it. Instead, he'd watched James grow up, falling in love and taking responsibility and caring for Sirius in a different way from Remus. They'd all joined the Order and fought and lost together, always together, until one day, they didn't.</p><p>          Until Remus and Peter were left to lose alone, and then Peter was lost too.</p><p>          And it was all the fault of that terrible, terrible house. He'd stared so long at the balcony that his vision had begun to grey, though it was better than the spinning. That <em>awful</em> house, with its awful family- that was what had ended it all. Sirius could have stayed beside him forever, running through full moons and swinging over the creek and walking barefoot on the beach, had it not been for that house. It had trapped him and twisted him too long before he'd broken free, and even then its darkness had pulled him back somehow.</p><p>          It was the uncertainty that had killed Remus the most for the past six years. He couldn't understand how on <em>earth</em> Sirius had been compelled to rejoin the world he'd spent sixteen years fighting against. He'd hated the Blacks, hated Voldemort and his agenda and every belief he'd stood for. How could he have gone back? What could have convinced him to turn on his friends for <em>them</em>? Sirius did not love his family; how could he have ever supported the causes they'd lived and breathed by?</p><p>          Remus had spent three hours in Dumbledore's office after it had all happened, after the Potters were dead and Harry- beautiful, wonderful Harry- was taken from him, after Peter was killed along with all the others they were saying Sirius had killed. Remus had fought for Harry first, insisting a million times that he would take every precaution, make every protection for him. It was the first time he'd hated Dumbledore, when the Headmaster had all too calmly repeated over and over that Petunia's protection was best.</p><p>          "What if she doesn't even love him?" Remus had asked, voice breaking as he neared the end of what he already knew to be a losing argument. Petunia had never even met him, hadn't come for Lily's baby shower or the birth. He'd spent years at Lily's side as her relationship with her sister hissed and died away.</p><p>          Dumbledore had not seemed to think it mattered that Remus would love Harry far better than that woman ever could. His mind was made up, and after a while he would hear no more of it.</p><p>          Remus had argued for Sirius next, Sirius who had not yet been sent to Azkaban, Sirius who had reportedly killed and killed the ones they'd both loved. "He wouldn't, he <em>wouldn't</em>," he'd shouted at Dumbledore. "Sirius is innocent, I know he is! He always loved James best, always saw him and the Potters as family- even <em>if</em> he turned to Voldemort, he'd never have hurt any of us." <em>You knew him too, you </em>knew<em> him- how could you think he'd ever turn to the Death Eaters?</em></p><p>          He hadn't been prepared to make that argument, though. The mere possibility that Dumbledore could talk him into believing it was too much.</p><p>          "I do not know how his heart changed," Dumbledore had admitted. "But the evidence of his guilt is there. There were witnesses, Remus, and we know Sirius was not under the Imperius Curse or any other enchantment when he acted. He was the Potter's Secret Keeper as well, you know that. How else could Voldemort ever have found them?"</p><p>          "He was the most powerful Dark wizard, you've said yourself his magical achievements are greater than we know. If there was a way to be found, he'd have found it!"</p><p>          Dumbledore shook his head and insisted that there was no other possibility, that he'd explored them all himself and found no other explanation. "Do not lose yourself in pursuit of a false truth that better suits your wounded heart," he had warned.</p><p>          Remus hadn't been convinced that Dumbledore had truly looked as deeply into it as he claimed, but he didn't have solid enough counter-arguments to the indisputable facts. He'd gone home to the cramped accommodations the Ministry had found for him while his apartment was held for evidence. Sirius hadn't returned home since the day before the Potters were murdered, but that hadn't seemed to matter to the investigators. Either that, or they simply hadn't wanted to believe a werewolf whose partner had apparently caused so much death.</p><p>          Remus fought back the part of him that wanted to scream and rage at the hidden house. It had to have been the Blacks somehow, had to have been their influence. They'd done something to Sirius, no matter if the Ministry had found a trace of it or not. Legilimency, perhaps, or some potion to turn his mind- possibly even torture, until they'd broken him down to madness. He would never have given them up, never have killed Peter, unless he wasn't in his right mind doing it.</p><p>          Many times, he'd wondered why he had been spared. Why Sirius had killed James and Lily and Peter, but left his easiest target untouched. It would have been so easy for him to kill Remus, if he'd truly wanted to. Part of Remus wanted to think that Sirius's love for him ran deeper than any Black influence could ever touch. It had never been perfect, Sirius Black's way of loving him, but it was the realest thing Remus had ever known. Even now, Remus felt that love in his veins, that care that could never truly leave. It was nothing like the protection in the Evans' blood that kept Harry safe; there was no spell or incantation to summon or seal it. Sirius's heart had been given so freely, with all the wild darkness that came with it. It was not a give-and-take magic, but a promise.</p><p>          Remus could not break that promise for a moment by believing it had all happened by intention. He had to believe the Blacks had done something, had to believe that boy at the beach would never stop loving them. Even if the rest of the world was happy to see a madman in a cell, Remus could not imagine that the sweet man coming home to kiss him hello in the evenings was the same one who had laughed in that street when Peter was dead.</p><p>          Sometimes, part of him wondered if it really had been Sirius they'd taken away. Maybe somewhere in that house, some shifting figure lived still, keeping to the shadows and wandering forever the gloomy halls he'd once tried so hard to escape. Maybe there was a man within whose hair smelled of summertime with fingers tall as the tales they told of him. Maybe, just maybe, if Remus had James's mirror, grey eyes would meet his once more, and all would be as it was in that summer on the balcony.</p><p>          Hours later, Remus's lean figure was sprawled on top of a couch, soundly asleep. He never made it to those halls, never searched out a phantom he knew did not exist. Another Halloween had passed, as hideous as the last. Sometime the next morning, long arms would stretch out as he woke, forever reaching for a heart locked so far away.</p>
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